Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels, Issue 14 (Patreon)

Welcome back, everyone, to Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels. I plan to catch up with the missing issues as soon as possible, so you may be getting a lot of these in your inbox over the next few weeks. Please see this post for an explanation of the situation and a special offer from me for those who feel that they had not received enough value for their support in the past months.

As always, I welcome all feedback, and the source of all images not explicitly sourced either within the image or by text attribution is myself. Now, let's get this show back on the Rainbow Road.

This is Supper Mario Broth: The Lost Levels.

Koopaling Airships: An Analysis

New Super Mario Bros. U, released for the Wii U in 2012 and recently re-released for the Switch in 2018, contains unique designs for airships used by the Koopalings that play a prominent role in the game's story. Below is their first appearance in the game's intro; they are easily identifiable by their large figureheads in the shape of the respective Koopaling's face.

After the intro, the airships disperse across the game's world and are seen circling the different castles marking the end of each area. At the end of each castle, the player characters always enter an outdoor balcony where the respective airship is flying in the background; entering a cannon shoots them into the ship, where the Koopaling is fought.

I would like to examine the visual designs of the airships, which are suprisingly consistent with the ensuing fights in some aspects, but also seem to have not been paid much attention to by the developers in other aspects. Let us start with the first one encountered: Lemmy's airship at the castle in Acorn Plains.

(All of the following images in this section were taken from this video.)

Lemmy's airship is very basic in its design. It is the smallest of them, and has no unique structural features other than the single hair strand protruding from the back of the ship, being the only ship whose figurehead's features extend outside the very front of the ship. Note that Lemmy's ship being the smallest fits with Lemmy also being the smallest Koopaling, however, not every ship is in line with the Koopaling's relative size to the others, as e.g. Ludwig's and Larry's ship are the same size despite Ludwig being larger.

The interior fits with Lemmy's personality - there is a pattern resembling a circus tent on the ceiling, tying into his main trait of liking circuses, juggling, balancing on a ball, etc. The fact that the airship is single-story matches up between the exterior and the interior, however, we can see the one thing that will continue to be a problem for all of the airships - the windows. All interiors we see (5 of them, as 2 of the battles take place on the exteriors of their airships) contain 2 visible windows each. However, on the exteriors of the airships, there are no windows at all, just cannon holes. 

(Or at least, there are no windows that in any way resemble the ones seen in the interiors. Every airship has some opaque glass objects around the back of the ships that could either be very small, strangely convex windows - which are sometimes attached to parts of the ship too small to reasonably contain a room - or some manner of light fixture.)

Here is Morton's ship, seen in the Layer-Cake Desert:

The ship is made out of a darker wood, but its unique property is that it has two stories, evidenced by the two stacked cannon holes on the sides. This ties in with the interior...

Morton's airship is the only airship that contains a bottomless pit for the characters to fall into. I believe that it is no coincidence that the only ship with a pit is also the only two-story one - the design having two stories accommodates one being used for battling and the other being used as the "dead zone" to be treated as a bottomless pit. It is this very observation that resulted in me getting the idea to examine the ship designs closer.

Note that Morton's ship, in contrast to Lemmy's, is not themed after himself, but after the area he is fought in. The ship contains sand, hieroglyphic markings, and Stone-Eye statues. One may argue that Morton may simply like deserts, since he was the boss of Desert Land in his first appearance in Super Mario Bros. 3, but that leaves out the fact that in many games he appeared in, he was not the boss of the desert world.

Next is Larry's ship seen in the Sparkling Waters.

Larry's ship is slightly larger than Lemmy's, but not large enough to have two stories or even two parallel cannon holes on each side.

Larry's ship is, for the lack of a better word, "ship-themed", which may sound absurd out of context, but looking at the design, seems like the best way to describe it to me. The windows are styled after ship's wheels, there are compass rose decorations, and the ceiling is a map. It is almost like a parody of what a ship should look like, however, keeping in mind that it is an airship, styling it after a seagoing ship would perhaps make more sense. The ship is filled with water and uses waterspouts for the battle, but this is not in any way indicated from the outside.

Next, Wendy's ship in the Frosted Glacier.

The two unique properties of this ship are the ice skates on the bottom and giant rings, resembling Wendy's own bracelets, around the cannons. The rings shake every time the lids of the cannon holes slam against them, which is an interesting detail. The ice skates are obviously a reference to Wendy wearing ice skates during the battle; however, in-universe, putting ice skates on an airship could have some use in landing it on ice. In fact, to my knowledge, this is the only decoration on any Mario game airship that seems to in any way facilitate landing; as usually airships not only never land, but also literally anchor themselves while still in mid-air, as seen in Super Mario Bros. 3.

In typical Wendy style, the airship is decorated with bows, ribbons and hearts, as well as ice, fitting for the world the battle takes place in. There seem to be two additional windows on the sides, but they are cut off so that we cannot be certain of their shape, or even if they are windows at all. 

Next, Iggy's ship seen in Soda Jungle:

This design is another one of those that made me believe that some of the exteriors were definitely designed with the interiors in mind, just like Morton's. Note how Iggy's ship is the only one with a metal part - the lowest part of the ship is grey iron instead of wood. Also note how the metal appears darker towards the bottom, as though it was covered in soot. Interestingly, the ship is also the only one with two propellers in the back - even the biggest ones of the rest only have one propeller. This is likely due to the metal being much heavier than wood, requiring additional propulsion.

In the interior, we see that the airship is also metal on the inside. There does not seem to be any decoration theme beyond "metal" here, but shortly after falling down, we see this:

The airship fills halfway up with lava. This also makes me believe that the metal bottom on the exterior has been deliberately designed to reference this - as clearly a wooden ship would not be able to hold the lava without burning. This would also explain the blackened part on the bottom. 

So far, some of the airships have had interesting design considerations regarding the exterior vs. interior. The two remaining ones, however, do not show the interior - instead, the battles take place in a scene that is also on the exterior of the airship. Ideally, the same model would be used for the battle as for the cutscenes, but this is not the case.

Here is Roy's ship from the Rock Candy Mines:

The design is not remarkable outside of having two cannon holes in parallel on each side. Look closely at the main mast. Then look at the actual battle arena below.

No part of the main mast, or really any part of the exterior of the ship at all, looks like this platform. As we will see in the Ludwig battle, this is actually the main mast minus the crow's nest and the very top of the mast. You can see a metal platform right above the main propeller on the exterior model, but it has the crow's nest on it. It would have been very easy to remove part of the model for this ship in particular, but the designers did not do it for unknown reasons.

Finally, Ludwig's ship seen in the Meringue Clouds.

This ship has a unique green colored section on the bottom, as well as a crenellated platform near the bottom of the mast that is not on any of the other airships. The platform looks suspiciously like it was added so that the battle could take place there, however...

...strangely, the battle actually takes place in the crow's nest instead. While it is commendable that the structure seen here actually is on the exterior model as well, one can only wonder what the purpose of the crenellated platform is. It is almost as if it is misleading on purpose; or perhaps the battle's location was changed in development. Note how the bottom of the crow's nest is identical to Roy's battle. 

All in all, we have several ships that seem to have been designed with a correspondence between interior and exterior in mind, and a few that were not. We can only speculate as to why there is such a difference in pertinence between the designs.

Elevate for 8 Red Coins In Style

There is a way to make the button-operated elevator in Hazy Maze Cave in Super Mario 64 invisible through the use of a glitch. Note that this works only in the original version (although it does work on all Virtual Console versions of it) and not in Super Mario 64 DS.

Here is footage of what happens if Mario steps on the elevator (which, by the way, should really have been called something else - an elevator by definition should change its elevation, i.e. move up or down, which this platform never does), then steps off.

Note how the platform blinks for a second before reappearing in its original position. It is this blinking that can be exploited for an interesting visual effect. First, let us look at it in action:

The elevator becomes invisible save for the buttons, and the effect lasts for as long as Mario is able to keep it active, i.e. keep it from disappearing and respawning. Here is what needs to be done to result in this effect:

1. The elevator must be in a state of blinking, as shown in the first animation.
2. Mario must jump onto one of the buttons that would result in the elevator moving in any direction where it would not immediately hit a wall; meaning, jumping on the nearest button would not have worked as it would result in the elevator hitting a wall.
3. Mario must touch the button without touching the rest of the elevator, so the jump must be precise.
4. Mario must land on the button on a frame where the elevator is blinking out of sight, not on a frame where it is visible.

If all four requirements are met, this visual effect will be the reward.

System-Dependent Greetings

This is a small detail that only those who have had the opportunity to buy both the original Nintendo DS and the Nintendo DS Lite could experience. In Mario Kart DS, upon starting the game, Mario greets the player with a short voice line. Here is a video of a player starting the game on the original Nintendo DS (only the beginning few seconds are relevant).

Note that the game starts with the sound of an engine quickly revving twice and Mario saying "Yahoo!". Now compare this to a video of a player starting the game on a Nintendo DS Lite (again, only listen to the first few seconds).

Here, Mario says "Here we go!" after the engine sounds. Now, the idea of a game adjusting some minor feature based on the version of the console it is played on is rather common - for a time, it was common to have different graphics display when a Game Boy game was inserted into a Game Boy, a Super Game Boy, or a Game Boy Color.

Above is an example of the different ways to experience the Helmet game in Game & Watch Gallery 2: Game Boy Color on the left, Game Boy in the middle and Super Game Boy on the right.

However, what is interesting here is that the Nintendo DS Lite released in March 2006, while Mario Kart DS released in November 2005. The programmers must have included instructions in the game to look for hardware that was not yet released at the time to adjust the greeting. (An argument can be made that since the Super Game Boy included its own built-in content for games released prior to it, that the Nintendo DS Lite could come with its own "Here we go!" sound not included on the base cartridge, however, in the case of the latter, the console's BIOS does not contain any sounds or other assets to be used with particular games.)

Who knows - perhaps at this very moment, unused assets in already released Switch games are waiting to be discovered as they are coded to only appear when used with a different version of the Switch that has not been announced yet. Perhaps Mario will say something other than "Super Mario Odyssey" when starting the game on the (hypothetical) Nintendo Switch Mini. Only time will tell.

The Shop Points Explanations You Will Never See

In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, there is a reward system for buying items at shops called "shop points". I will not explain them here because as you will see, this section is about explanations of shop points and you will have read enough of them by the end of it that my own explanation would not be required.

What matters is that the explanation is heard exactly once in any playthrough (unless the player quits without saving after hearing it) - upon interacting with any shopkeeper in the game for the first time. As the game is an RPG, items are plentiful and used often, so the vast majority of players would enter the first store they encounter - the one on the Rogueport Plaza - and hear the explanation from that particular clerk. 

A small percentage of players would skip this store and hear the explanation from either the Petalburg store in Chapter 1 or Pungent's store in Chapter 2. However, this is where a normal player's ability to skip stores would end.

To enter Chapter 3, Mario needs to purchase a contact lens for Zess T., who is blocking the way to the west side of Rogueport until she receives the lens. The only way to get the lens is to buy it from the Rogueport store - therefore, there is no legitimate way to get to Chapter 3 and beyond or the two stores in Rogueport available after giving Zess T. the lens without visiting at least one store and thus making it impossible to hear their explanations of the shop point system.

I have been contacted by tumblr.com user "flingbean" with an observation: apparently, although it is not legitimately possible to hear those explanations, they still exist in the game's code and can be accessed if Mario uses glitches to get to them. Now, I was able to glitch my way to the West Rogueport store and the Rogueport Underground store, both normally only accessible after giving Zess T. the lens, to see their explanations.

However, accessing the rest of the stores in the game would require much more involved means, i.e. not just glitching but actively modding the game to allow Mario to access the places in question. I decided that instead of doing all that just to get screenshots of text, I could get to the source - the source code, to be precise - and simply extract the text from the game's files directly. Here is the text for the explanation at all the other stores:

Glitzville Souvenir Shop, Chapter 3

Hey, hey, hey there! Wait... Is this your first time in a store?
Yeah, you had that first-time customer look... Lemme tell you about shop points.
You collect 1 shop point each time you buy something.
Collect enough points and I'll give you a bonus gift, OK? Some are reeeeally rare!
I put all the bonus-gift details up on the wall over there, so take a look.
Well, that's my spiel on shop points. Do you want to hear all that again?

Twilight Shop, Chapter 4

Greetings, and welcome! Wait... Is this your first time in a shop? EVER?
Yeah, you had that first-time customer look... Let me tell you about shop points.
You collect 1 shop point each time you buy something.
Collect enough points and I'll give you a bonus gift, OK? Some are really rare!
I put all the bonus-gift details up on the wall over there, so take a look.
Well, that's my spiel on shop points. Do you want to hear all that again?

Keelhaul Galleria, Chapter 5

Ahoy, Captain 'Stache! Is this your first time visiting a shop?
Let me explain the shop-point system for you, OK?
You earn one shop point for each item you buy.
Now, as you build up points, you get rewarded with great prizes, including rare items.
Different stores have different prizes, so stay on the lookout, OK?
And that's it! Would you like to hear all that again?

Sales Stall on the Excess Express, Chapter 6

How goes it, traveler? Hang on... Is this your first time in a shop?
Yup, I thought so... Lemme tell you about shop points really quick.
You collect 1 shop point each time you buy something.
Collect enough points and I'll give you a bonus gift! Some are really rare, too!
I put all the bonus-gift details up on the wall over there, so take a look.
Well, that's my speech on shop points. Do you want to hear all that again?

Northwinds Mart in Fahr Outpost, Chapter 7

Da, da, welcome, welcome. Huh... Is this first time in shop for you?
Da, you look lost to me. I tell you about shop points.
You collect 1 shop point each time you buy something.
Collect enough points and I give you bonus gift, da? Some are rare.
I put bonus-gift details up on wall over there, so look at it.
That is what I say about shop points. You want to hear it all again?

Interestingly, the Keelhaul Galleria cleck mentions that different shops have different prizes, when in reality, they don't. Of course, this was very unlikely to get caught in testing as there is no legitimate way to view that message.

A Surprising Wario Reference

If you have followed the greater Mario franchise with all its sub-franchises - and there are a lot of them after what is now 38 years of operation - you may have gotten used to the fact that some of them never reference each other. While the mainline Mario platformers constantly reuse characters and locations, as do the games within the Mario & Luigi series and the games within the WarioWare series, it is almost unheard of for these franchises to cross-reference each other. The fact that the Star Spirits, characters from Paper Mario, appeared in Mario Party 5 is an exception, for example.

Particularly the Wario franchise is split despite revolving around Wario. The Wario Land series games very rarely get references in the WarioWare games, and Waluigi - despite being Wario's partner in all non-Wario-centric media - has yet to make an appearance in either Wario Land or WarioWare, not to mention Wario's Woods and Mario vs. Wario, games that seem all but forgotten now. 

With how divided Wario is among his own franchises, it almost never happens that his games are referenced outside the Wario microcosm. Still, in Super Mario 3D World, there is a very specific reference that is so obscure that even people who played the game it is referencing are unlikely to catch it.

Please listen to the whistle tune made by Hisstocrat at 32 seconds into this video. It consists of five notes and results in snakes being summoned from the ground.

Now, listen to the cutscene upon finding the flute in Wario Land 3 at exactly 4 minutes into this video. The cutscene lasts 30 seconds; it begins with the flute playing a 4-note song slowly. During this segment, it is hard to hear the resemblance to the Hisstocrat whistle, especially due to the fact that it has a different number of notes and the excessive amount of distortion.

However, after this, the flute plays the same tune three more times at a much higher speed, which results in snakes being summoned. Note that while the tune still has four notes, there is an echo effect that makes it sound like five, and now the tune in fact highly resembles Hisstocrat's.

It is almost unbelievable how obscure of a reference that is: keep in mind that each of Wario Land 3's cutscenes plays exactly once per playthrough, and the tune is not repeated after this. So, in order to recognize it, a player would almost certainly need to have replayed Wario Land 3 several times just to have heard the jingle enough times to memorize it. Together with the sheer implausibility of a high-profile 3D Mario platformer referencing a Game Boy Color game of an unrelated subfranchise, it makes the reference nearly impossible to recognize. 

Who knows what kind of obscure callbacks we will encounter in the future? I'm rooting for the next Mario platformer to reference Yoshi's Cookie: Kuruppon Oven de Cookie, myself.

The Incredible Balance of Donkey Kong Country 2 Level Themes

If you have played Donkey Kong Country 2, you may have noticed that the game - as all Donkey Kong Country series games - uses fixed combinations of backgrounds, foreground tiles, and music for its stages that only differ in palette swaps whenever they are reused. These combinations of assets are usually called "level themes". (This is in contrast to 2D Mario platformers that mix-and-match to a limited extent between backgrounds, foregrounds, and music; particularly, there are almost always "normal" and "athletic" tracks that are used for roughly the same backgrounds and tilesets.)

However, one thing that you may have not noticed (unless you were playing through the game with a clipboard making a checklist) is that the level themes in Donkey Kong Country 2 are perfectly balanced. Out of the 13 themes, each is used exactly 3 times as the main theme for a level (more on what constitutes a main theme later). Let us go through the game's world and break down the themes, as well as take a look at how the game designers' commitment to never have the same theme twice in a row influenced the world design.

(All unsourced images in this section are from Nintendo Power's guide for Donkey Kong Country 2.)

Gangplank Galleon, the first world, introduces the Deck, Rigging, and Hold themes. Despite looking like Hold levels are neglected at first, over the course of the first three worlds, each of the themes is used exactly three times.

Pirate Panic: Deck
Mainbrace Mayhem: Rigging
Gangplank Galley: Deck
Lockjaw's Locker: Hold
Topsail Trouble: Rigging

Each of the worlds also has a boss, which uses tilesets from one of the themes but for the purpose of this calculation does not count as an example of the theme due to using different music and not being an actual platforming level.

Crocodile Cauldron introduces the Lava and Mines themes. To even out the Hold level count, there is also a shipwreck here.

Hot-Head Hop: Lava
Kannon's Klaim: Mines
Lava Lagoon: Hold
Red-Hot Ride: Lava
Squawks's Shaft: Mines

At this point, we have had 5 themes, each of them appearing exactly twice.

Krem Quay has 6 levels, and introduces the Bayou and Brambles themes, while closing off the Deck, Rigging and Hold themes with one level for each. The reason the ship-related themes must be closed at this point is that Krem Quay is the last world on Crocodile Isle that is on ground level. Any shipwrecks high up on the mountain would be much harder to explain (although the game does use one for the boss battle against Kreepy Krow in Gloomy Gulch halfway up the mountain, and Donkey Kong Country Returns has an entire level, Tippy Shippy, about shipwrecks that somehow got stuck in cliffs.)

Barrel Bayou: Bayou
Glimmer's Galleon: Hold (Done)
Krockhead Klamber: Bayou
Rattle Battle: Deck (Done)
Slime Climb: Rigging (Done)
Bramble Blast: Bramble

Note that Glimmer's Galleon ends with a one-screen area with the Deck theme. This does not count as the main area where all the gameplay happens is in the Hold theme. The same goes for all other examples of the theme changing for single rooms; the only real problem with this consideration being the level Animal Antics in the Lost World.

Krazy Kremland also has 6 levels, and introduces the Hive and Coaster themes, as well as finishing the Bayou theme and continuing the Bramble theme.

Hornet Hole: Hive
Target Terror: Coaster
Bramble Scramble: Bramble
Rickety Race: Coaster
Mudhole Marsh: Bayou (Done)
Rambi Rumble: Hive

Here we can see for the first time how the idea that the player should never play the same level theme back-to-back affects the world design. There are hives around the amusement park, but the path leads not inside the park to progress, but rather through it and back on the same side to access more hives just so the hive levels do not come after each other. Within the park, brambles interrupt the coaster so the player would not play two coaster levels after each other.

Gloomy Gulch is the first world that, due to the game being in its second half, has no freedom to introduce themes for other world to later wrap up, so it introduces and finishes its own theme, the Forest. Note that due to having three Forest levels, the map for Gloomy Gulch looks more homogeneous than previous maps. The world also finishes the Coaster theme (by using a variation set in a library, however, the tileset and gameplay are still the same Coaster from the previous world) and the Hive theme.

Ghostly Grove: Forest
Haunted Hall: Coaster (Done)
Gusty Glase: Forest
Parrot Chute Panic: Hive (Done)
Web Woods: Forest (Done)

At this point, it becomes clear that the world design is influenced not only by the desire to not repeat themes back-to-back, but to have exactly 3 of each theme, as the hive looks out of place in the forest (not to imply that hives should not be in forests, but the Gloomy Gulch has a strong "haunted" thematic present in the other 4 levels and the boss, which the hive does not share).

K. Rool's Keep is particularly interesting due to all this. Consider the design of the fortress. It has a very peculiar two-part architecture; there is the upper part and then a completely disconnected lower part further down the mountain. This results in a very striking and memorable design not just for the keep, but for the entirety of Crocodile Isle:

And the reason it looks like this is just what I have been describing in this segment: the desire to space apart levels of the same theme. Although it was impossible for the designers to create a world where three levels in the Castle theme could be spaced apart so that there was a buffer between each, they nevertheless separated one of the Castle levels from the others with this original two-part castle design. In other words, if this concept did not underlie the world design, K.Rool would have had a much more traditional and perhaps less memorable-looking single-part castle.

This world introduces and finishes the Castle theme, as well as introducing the Ice Cave theme and finishing the Mines theme (which was left unfinished all the way back from World 2).

Arctic Abyss: Ice Cave
Windy Well: Mines (Done)
Castle Crush: Castle
Clapper's Cavern: Ice Cave
Chain Link Chamber: Castle
Toxic Tower: Castle (Done)

Chain Link Chamber and Toxic Tower are the only time in the game there are two levels of the same theme in a row. I am sure the team had at least tried to insert something else between them before deciding that it would be to the detriment of the world design.

At this point, the only themes left unfinished are Brambles, Lava and the newly introduced Ice Cave.

The mini-world The Flying Krock contains only one level outside of the boss battle, Screech's Sprint, which finishes the Bramble theme, leaving only Ice Cave and Lava open. Note that the brambles, which were more or less incidental to the Krem Quay and Kremland maps, now take on a plot-relevant role in this map as being the obstacle that entangles K.Rool's ship's ladder, making him unable to escape. The only question is, what are those brambles attached to? They certainly don't appear on either the K. Rool's Keep map or the world map. 

Finally, there is the Lost World. Since the Lost World levels are all accessed from other worlds and not in a row, none of them can be counted as following the other. Still, counting the worlds they are accessed from as their "level number" they follow the rule of not having the same theme follow itself. This world introduces and finishes the Jungle theme as well as finishing the Lava and Ice Cave themes.

Jungle Jinx (from Crocodile Cauldron): Jungle
Black Ice Battle (from Krem Quay): Ice Cave (Done)
Klobber Karnage (from Krazy Kremland): Jungle
Fiery Furnace (from Gloomy Gulch): Lava (Done)
Animal Antics (from K. Rool's Keep): Jungle (Done)

A note regarding Animal Antics: this is the only level with major sections in more than one theme. However, it does start with, end with, and contain a midsection with, the Jungle theme, while the other two themes, Ice Cave and Brambles, are relegated to singular sections, which is why I count it as Jungle.

If you agree with my classifications, then every theme appears exactly 3 times, making Donkey Kong Country 2 the most balanced platformer game I personally know of in terms of level themes.

Rolling Eyes at Mario's Death

I have been contacted by twitter.com user "SaveBlock" about a strange aspect of the animations of the eel-like Gringill enemies from the Beach Bowl Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy. There is a difference in the eye animations of the Gringills that depends on whether Mario has died at least once since entering the galaxy. 

Here is what they look like when Mario enters the galaxy and has not died yet:

Note how the Gringills' eyes are not animated. The iris is in the center of the eye and does not move. However, if Mario dies and then goes back to this spot without leaving the galaxy, here is what they look like:

Now the eyes of the Gringills are extremely animated, looking in all directions. While this is almost certainly some oddity in the code that causes the first scenario with the static eyes, it is interesting why it is specifically Mario's death that causes the correct behavior to activate.

Booster Hill Vista

In Super Mario RPG, a memorable mini-game sequence has Mario chase Booster, who has kidnapped Peach (or Toadstool, as she is known in that game) and is taking her to Marrymore with the intent of marrying her. The chase leads up Booster Hill, but today I am not talking about the hill or the chase. I'm talking about the background.

This is the background that slowly scrolls from right to left (as the chase leads to the left) on Booster Hill. It depicts some things that are instantly recognizable, and some that are not. I will give my best attempt to identify things in this background, and if you have ideas about the other objects here, please leave a comment on this post!

First, here is the world map for reference. Booster Hill is the winding hill near the bottom-center of the mainland, just top-left of the island on the very bottom. 

Let's start with the segment that is visible from the beginning, and the only one that fully corresponds to a portion of the map. This is unmistakably the beginning area. It has (from left to right) Bowser's keep with Exor sticking out of it, the broken bridge, Mario's house with the pipe on top, a hill that most likely represents Mushroom Way, and another hill with a building that is almost certainly the Mushroom Kingdom's castle. There is a small island to the right that does not correspond to anything but could be the Tadpole Pond area due to it being a much lower elevation than the Mushroom Kingdom.

The next part to the left of Bowser's keep is the Barrel Volcano - at least that is what would make the most sense, as there are no other large free-standing mountains on that map and the volcano is immediately to the left of Bowser's keep. However, the things around the volcano make much less sense. What is that small structure to the right of it? To me, it resembles a shark. While there is a shark-themed area in the game - the Sunken Ship - it does not actually look like a shark on the map. Perhaps this background is based on an old concept where it did look more shark-like?

In addition, the generic hill to the left of the volcano corresponds to nothing. You may think it could be Land's End, but as we take a look at the next segment, you will see it could not possibly be Land's End.

Because the next landmass is shown to have the beanstalk and Nimbus Land floating above it, making it Land's End, or at least Bean Valley. The problem, of course, is that in-game, Nimbus Land is directly above the volcano as well, while here, it is very far away from the volcano. There is also an isolated small island which could only be Yo'ster Isle - except that Yo'ster Isle is on the opposite end of the map from Nimbus Land. There is also something to the left of Bean Valley that looks like a castle or a town - but there is nothing in the game except for the Mushroom Kingdom that has those types of roofs, and there are no towns that would look like towns from a distance in Land's End either. (Monstro Town, while a town, is actually composed of caves instead of houses.)

It could be that whatever that leftmost portion is is just really strangely-drawn mountains, which would make sense for Land's End, but something about the straight angles makes this look like roofs to me personally. If you have any ideas on what this could represent, as well as why Nimbus Land would be so far away from the volcano, I would love to hear them!

The Functional Window Entrance

The Super Mario All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros. 2 contains a debug mode that comes with two functions: one to make the player character invincible on demand, and another that allows them to pass through walls. While experimenting with the second, I have found something I would have never expected to work. For context, here is the entrance to Wart's castle in the final level of the game, 7-2, and Mario entering it normally:

Note that the entrance is completely black. Do you see what else is completely black in this scene? The castle windows, which are blocked by the wall. Normally, if an object is supposed to not be reachable, it will not be functional, for obvious reasons. However, with the debug mode active, I could test whether the black tiles in the windows were actual functional door tiles by clipping through the wall.

Not only are the windows functional doors, they even deposit Mario into a point in the air, corresponding to the height of the windows above the floor! This makes me believe that at some point in development, these windows were able to be entered legitimately. The other possibility is that instead of using inert black tiles, the programmers thought a door would be able to be implemented quicker; but then why program it to accurately mimic Mario entering the castle through a window? It could be that the gamr is programmed in such a way that this is all entirely emergent from the code and required no human adjustment to work this way, but that would be a very impressive coincidence.

Regardless, the fact that this entrance works despite being unreachable is remarkable.

Only Enough Budget for Half of the Background

Take a look at these screenshots of the Wooded Kingdom background from Super Mario Odyssey. Note that all of them were taken from the same exact spot; Mario did not move other than rotating his view.

Does it look like the tower suddenly moved in front of the same spot in the background? After all, those are the same mountains. It has to be the same spot, and the foreground just moved, right? 

And what about this? This mountain is unmistakable. That's the same mountain, just with a different foreground, right? 

Wrong. As it turns out, there is only half a mountain background in the Wooded Kingdom. The texture covers only 180 degrees of the skybox, and is duplicated for the other 180. This means that you can look at any of the mountains in the background, turn around, and see the exact same mountain in front of you.

The game is really good at hiding this - after all, due to the texture being 180 degrees, you can never see two of the same mountain at once, and you need to turn around and remember what the mountain looked like to recognize that you are looking at the same texture again. Still, this is one of those things that seems more justified in 2D games than in 3D. In 2D, a background can potentially scroll forever, so it must stop and loop at some point. In 3D, there is only 360 degrees of background - how hard could it have been to simply draw twice as many original mountains? Then again, with how hard it is to discover this trick, perhaps the time saved on not drawing mountains was worth it compared to the small amount of people whose immersion would suffer from it.

This concludes today's issue. I hope to see you here again in a day or two as I continue this marathon until I have made up for the period of inactivity.

Thank you very much for reading.